Is it difficult to learn the Korean language? (Yes and no...) | AutoLingual - learn a foreign language yourself (2023)

FAQs

Is it hard to learn Korean by yourself? ›

The FSI puts Korean as a Category V language. Which means, it's one of the hardest languages to master. They estimate 2200 hours of study before you can reach fluency in Korean. Or 88 weeks of extremely intense study.

Korean language has a lot of connectors and sometimes the sentences can get really lengthy with so many connectors. Your poor brain will be busy figuring out the connectors in the first half of the sentence while your Korean friend would already have spoken 5 more sentences.

We often consider the Korean language one of the world's most difficult languages to learn, especially for English speakers. It has a reputation for being tough and can be scary for learners.

How long does it take to learn Korean fluently? It will take about 1200 hours to reach a high intermediate level. You'll need additional practice, so you may want to double that number to 2400 hours to get towards fluency. That would be about 23 hours of study per week for two years.

Although Korean might be ranked as one of the more difficult languages to learn by the Foreign Service Institute (FSI), it is by no means impossible. So don't worry about the “hours” it takes to learn Korean. You can learn Korean fast — and you may even already know more Korean than you think!

Learning the Korean language is certainly a good hedge. It could help make your career or business more relevant in the future. Korea is already one of the strongest economies in Asia, and if trends continue, learning Korean could be just as important as learning Mandarin for business and career prospects.

Korean is one of the easiest Asian languages to learn. Furthermore, the Korean alphabet is made up of 14 consonants and is known as Hangul. Likewise, Korean has ten vowels with symbols that you will combine into syllable blocks for usages. Similarly, another fun fact about Korean, it is an isolated language.

However, considering the larger number of sounds and the different particles in Korean, Japanese is definitely the easier language to start in. If you're not good at distinguishing new sounds and pronunciations, you're definitely going to have a hard time with Korean.

It's easier for Spanish speakers to learn other Romance languages (e.g., Italian, Portuguese, French). That said, languages such as Mandarin, Japanese, and Korean would be even more difficult than English.

Is Korean or Chinese more difficult? ›

Generally speaking, we might assert that Korean is easier for an English speaker to learn than Mandarin Chinese. But this is very relative. In fact, the US Foreign Service Institute assigns Mandarin Chinese and Korean the same level of difficulty. Both languages are in “Category Four”.

Like any language, Korean requires frequent exposure and lots of practice, so keeping up with your lessons on Duolingo is a great way to study. The Korean course has a special tab for learning Hangul where you can practice reading and forming Korean characters!

No matter your intentions for learning Korean, the first step is to learn hangeul. “Hangeul” (sometimes romanised as “hangul”) is Korea's writing system. It's called the “Korean alphabet,” but it's actually a syllabary, meaning that the “letters” are entirely phonetic.

The first thing you'll want to do is learn the alphabet. The Korean Alphabet (한글 | Hangeul) is one of the simplest alphabets to learn, even if you are an absolute beginner. You can learn this writing system in a few hours with some simple lessons.

Borrowed from Korean 오빠 (oppa, “elder brother or close elder male friend (of a female)”).

Despite Korean being fairly early to learn how to read, I'd say Korean is quite hard to learn (a 4/5 in difficulty) — harder to get to fluency for an English speaker than French or German, but easier than Chinese or Arabic.

South Korea is currently one of the most pro-American countries in the world.

Improves Your Memory And Boosts IQ

Bilinguals have many benefits, and the biggest one is intellectual growth. Learning Korean can help you improve your cognitive skills and make you a more logical and quick decision-maker. Hence you can also learn Korean to make your brain more active and healthy.

Is Korean hard to learn in college? ›

According to the Foreign Service Institute, Korean is one of the hardest languages for English speakers to learn. “The grammar is very different,” Kim says. “And the sentence structure is very different as well. In Korean, the verb is always at the end of the sentence.

Learning Korean connects you to 75 million people worldwide. Here, you can have a one-of-a-kind opportunity to dive into Korean culture and explore a new world. Because you want to prepare for your future. Knowing another language and appreciating other cultures—these are skills that last a lifetime.

Unlike other East-Asian languages, Korean isn't a tonal language. This means, that the meaning of the word doesn't change, regardless of what your accent is like. This makes learning Korean much easier than Japanese. Japanese has 46 letters in its alphabet. Meanwhile, Korean only has 24.

Korean is considered to be much easier than Japanese. There are more letters in the Japanese alphabet than in Korean. Japanese also contains more complicated Chinese characters and difficult grammar.

Further, the Koreans are more closely related to the Japanese and quite distant from the Chinese. The above evidence of the origin of Koreans fits well with the ethnohistoric account of the origin of Koreans and the Korean language.

While the similarities between the two languages are noticeable, Chinese and Korean aren't mutually intelligible. Korean and Chinese people couldn't understand each other if they only used their native language in a conversation. That's because they're from different language families.

Mandarin

As mentioned before, Mandarin is unanimously considered the most difficult language to master in the world! Spoken by over a billion people in the world, the language can be extremely difficult for people whose native languages use the Latin writing system.

Learning accents can be hard in any language and Korean accents are no exception. The pronunciation of many Korean words can come slowly to beginner students who are not used to the different sounds and formations found within the Korean language.

While Seoul is the modern capital city of South Korea, many locals aren't fluent in English. It's generally not a very widely spoken language in South Korea. However, you'll have better luck finding a local who can speak English in main tourist neighborhoods, such as Myeongdong, Dongdaemun and Hongdae.

What language is most like Korean? ›

In terms of grammar, Korean is closest to Japanese. It also shares many words of Chinese origin. As such, learning Korean will give you a head start on learning Japanese, as well as some Chinese vocabulary.

Knowing Chinese will help you learn Korean in a few different ways, giving you maybe a 25% advantage over other Korean learners: A lot of words in Korean will sound familiar (as they come from Chinese)

Meanwhile, Korean grammar is likely the hardest, while tones in Mandarin are notoriously difficult for native English speakers to hear, and Japanese is the fastest spoken language in the world at over 7 syllables per second.

Korean is the clear-cut easiest to read and write when compared to Japanese and Chinese, as its alphabet is easier to remember and more logical to Western language speakers.

The good news is that learning Hangul is relatively easy; it can take you 90 minutes to get the basics down. After 1 week, you should have a solid understanding of this alphabet. A good approach is to break down the Hangul in chunks and study each one in 15 minute sessions a day.

1. Learning the Korean Alphabet: With any standard lesson, you will learn the alphabet as quickly as 60-90 minutes. It will help you to learn the basics of the alphabet so that you can read most words.

Across multiple sources, Mandarin Chinese is the number one language listed as the most challenging to learn. The Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center puts Mandarin in Category IV, which is the list of the most difficult languages to learn for English speakers.

First Language

Mandarin Chinese tops the list of most commonly spoken native languages with 870 million native speakers. With less than 200 million second language speakers, the vast majority of Mandarin speakers are native and also located in mainland China.

The best app to learn Korean is Rocket Languages. It has a complete course that takes you from complete beginner to conversational in just a few months. The app also helps you practice every communication skill (reading, writing, speaking, and listening), unlike most other apps.

Has anyone learned Korean from Duolingo? ›

The audio is awful and difficult to hear. If you are a novice with little idea about this language, you won't learn meaningful on Duolingo Korean. If you know even a little Korean, you notice that many of the sounds are like each other and are not correct.

Unlike other East-Asian languages, Korean isn't a tonal language. This means, that the meaning of the word doesn't change, regardless of what your accent is like. This makes learning Korean much easier than Japanese.

If you compare both languages, you will notice that both of them are equally challenging. The Korean language's writing systems are hard to learn, whereas the Japanese alphabet is complex to understand. 40 Alphabets, which makes creating and understanding sentences easier. Easier as the writing system is more simple.

Generally speaking, we might assert that Korean is easier for an English speaker to learn than Mandarin Chinese. But this is very relative. In fact, the US Foreign Service Institute assigns Mandarin Chinese and Korean the same level of difficulty. Both languages are in “Category Four”.

Korean is considered to be much easier than Japanese. There are more letters in the Japanese alphabet than in Korean. Japanese also contains more complicated Chinese characters and difficult grammar.

Other people who enjoy grammar and grammar-based languages find Korean the easiest since it doesn't have the complicated Chinese characters, and some weird geniuses may enjoy Japanese the most as it is the most challenging – difficult grammar AND Chinese characters.

Relatively, Korean would be an easier language to learn. Thanks to its phonetic alphabet and more simplistic grammar rules, Korean is not the most challenging Asian language to learn. Chinese on the other hand is much more widely spoken. This means that finding study materials and practice partners would be easier.

How many words do you need to know in Korean to be considered a fluent speaker? The answer is between 3,000 and 5,000.

In fact, I'd put it as one of the hardest languages I've learned. Despite Korean being fairly early to learn how to read, I'd say Korean is quite hard to learn (a 4/5 in difficulty) — harder to get to fluency for an English speaker than French or German, but easier than Chinese or Arabic.

Should I learn Korean or Japanese or Chinese first? ›

Gateway to Korean and Japanese - it would be easier for you to learn Korean and Japanese once you learned Chinese. These three languages all share sino-vocabulary. In Korean its about 60% of the vocabulary.

Vocabulary is the answer. The inefficiency of not being able to frame comprehensible sentences shows when you reach an intermediate level of learning and regret on how much time you gave on learning the grammar and still can't hold basic conversation because of lack of vocabulary.

Hangul is made up of 14 consonants and 10 vowels, making it an alphabet with a total of 24 letters.